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Sunrise Loop; sounds pleasant doesn’t it? – 27/09/2011

There are a couple of things I dream about when anticipating my two week’s riding in Noosa. One is this…

Costa Noosa Coffee Shop - Sunshine Beach

“The best coffee in the world” due to my psych at the time… Holidays, sunshine, cycling, mates.

The second is the ride up The Range (Gyndier Drive) followed by a smooth strong pace-line up the Cooroy-Noosa Road. The undulating but gradually climbing stretch of hot-mix makes it too hard to resist the front – despite the words of Fossie warning me of the much harder undulations to come. I love this bit of road so I just ignored the future and drove the front… bliss!

And then later? Oh yes… Fossie was right. I managed to stay with the group most of the way around but ended up struggling to keep touch towards the end of Sunrise Road. Had I listened to the wise words of my good mate earlier in the ride, I may well have stayed in touch right the way around – not that I’m making excuses. My tyres were flat; I went too hard early; I’ve got a real bad chesty cough; I weigh over 100k. But really… no excuses.

This is the hardest ride of the week for me up here. It’s the one which takes it’s toll harder on the big blokes than any other so I’m happy enough to have got around only metres behind the leaders of the bunch. Of course I caught them on that almighty drop back into Tewantin anyway so all is good with the world.

After coffee, a few of us did some extras down the coast for a bit and then I went and did another lap of The Range on my own finishing with a 3.5hr ride when you take out the coffee (100+k). Not a bad first hit-out and glad to get Sunrise out of the way for the first one.

(PS – Tim was taught a lesson for dissing an earlier serving of iced chocolate (left) but was later rewarded with the usual high-carb serve (right). I wonder if the this is as good as the coffee. Will find out tomorrow I guess.)